Free Will, Determinism, Compatibilism

Free Will:
1. The ability or discretion to choose; free choice: chose to remain behind of my own free will.
2. The power of making free choices that are unconstrained by external circumstances or by an agency such as fate or divine will.

Determinism:
The philosophical doctrine that every state of affairs, including every human event, act, and decision is the inevitable consequence of antecedent states of affairs.

Compatibilism:
the above two definitions do not contradict eachother, and are both true.

Assuming the laws of the universe does not fall under determinism... then some methods of doing things will naturally be better than others. So while there's free will... a choice to do whatever you want. Some choices are clearly better than others. Thus people generally tend towards a seemingly predictable path.

So I believe in free will under that assumption. But since that assumption cannot be proven I fall under compatibilism.

if nothing can happen without a reason then free will is an illusion created by the inability to understand the aforementioned due its complexity

when a ball is held in the hand and then dropped, we do not think the ball fell to the ground on its own free will because we understand gravity. something as complicated as to why a person would choose one thing or another ultimately equates to some reason, just an incredibly complex one.

the concept of free will is a copout, more or less. the closest thing would be a truly random outcome, and "will" just doesn't seem like a good word to apply there. even a random (and very few things are actually random) is provoked by a reason, and still falls within a finite set of options.

In fact, I'm working on a proof against free will. The basic idea (which I still have a hard time expressing) is that free will depends on some "agent" that exists apart from the rest of the predetermined universe to make a decision and affect outcome. If there is no independent self, there can be no free will. Since I am starting to see the self in term of an intersection of streams, rather than something independent, the self vanishes, along with any chance of free will.

and free will...well, because, humans define the word "choice" right? well, "choice" in my view is just a category for a specific kind of deterministic action in humans. we all believe we have free will, because, well, that's just how our machinery works. and we have to be able to blame people for their actions, or else society would fall apart.

see, from the deterministic view, none of the paragraph above makes any sense. that's why we have to have different frames when talking about different things. like, there's the physics frame, in which everything is deterministic. there's a chemistry frame that reduces down to the physics frame through some set of equations, but we use words in chemistry that have no meaning in physics. if you build up enough frames (that all reduce to each other), you can get up to the socially accepted human perception frame, in which "free will" is a basic term, completely integral to the whole point of view.

so "free will" is true in the socially accepted human perception frame, "determinism" is true in the physics frame, and they don't contradict each other. because everything in the first frame can be reduced to physics anyhow, even the term "free will".

and shit, if we were stuck in the determinism mindset all the time, that would suck ass. i've been there, believe me. here's the picture: tripping on hallucinogens 50+ times in a year, and smoking weed 7+ times a day. bad.

can't...stop...typing... the universe is forcing me to make this post. Seriously, though, how is free will even debatable? Sure there are things beyond our control. Like the ball mentioned in a previous post, we cannot will ourselves not to fall. We can, though, choose whether or not to jump off a building. Once that decision is made, there really aren't many options. scream? flail arms? aim for something? Reality exerts many constraints on actions. Choices are always limited. I can't just decide to be home right now and be there. I'll have to get in my car and drive there. I have other options, but I'll choose the car. Maybe I'm missing something.

can't...stop...typing... the universe is forcing me to make this post. Seriously, though, how is free will even debatable? Sure there are things beyond our control. Like the ball mentioned in a previous post, we cannot will ourselves not to fall. We can, though, choose whether or not to jump off a building. Once that decision is made, there really aren't many options. scream? flail arms? aim for something? Reality exerts many constraints on actions. Choices are always limited. I can't just decide to be home right now and be there. I'll have to get in my car and drive there. I have other options, but I'll choose the car. Maybe I'm missing something.

well the laws of physics are always gonna apply to every atom in your body and your brain. if you "choose" to jump off a building, it's not like any atom in your body decided not to follow the laws of physics at any point in your thought process. determinism always holds. question is, can you reconcile that with free will?

and free will...well, because, humans define the word "choice" right? well, "choice" in my view is just a category for a specific kind of deterministic action in humans. we all believe we have free will, because, well, that's just how our machinery works. and we have to be able to blame people for their actions, or else society would fall apart.

i dont think free will is really true though, it's a beneficial illusion, but that doesnt make it true.

at the level of granularity where the truth of determinism comes out, nothing is really implicated anything against the "free will" most people see and use.

"free will" is an important component of progression. however, the concept is ironic in the sense that even it is a result of something.